To coincide with GABF Week, we’re profiling a handful of Denver restaurants that take their beer seriously. You can click here to read our Wednesday Food section story[2]. Here at First Drafts, we’re taking a deeper look at each featured restaurant because the Internet has no word count. Next up: Fruition.

Fruition Restaurant: Big things in small spaces

Eric Borg has all of two shelves of downstairs storage space in the tight quarters of Fruition in which to build a beer program.

There, he has enough room for about eight cases of beer. So he must choose carefully and that means curating a rotating cast of seasonal beers that changes when the food menu does.

The calendar just flipped to fall, which means German-style beers and The Bruery’s Autumn Maple, brewed with yams. Come winter there will be belly-warmers. In spring, dopplebocks. And in summer, saisons.

While Euclid Hall was committed to a deep beer list from the start, it was a slow build for Fruition, beginning three or four years ago with Borg’s predecessor, Matt Jackson. Typically, about 14 bottles are available.

“If you walk into a restaurant and have a really good list and beers you have never heard of,” Borg said, “you are going to ask questions.”

Like many beer geeks, Borg has gravitated toward Italy, which is experiencing a craft beer renaissance with scores of little breweries producing inventive beers that could not be further than Peroni.

Fruition is also partial to sour beers, whose lactic acid delivers a tartness that pairs well with food just as highly acidic wines do.

If you’re new to sour beers, Borg suggests a small bottle of Duchesse de Bourgogne, an extremely drinkable Flanders red ale-style beer produced by Brouwerij Verhaeghe in Vichte, Belgium.

“I like pairing the delicacy of the beer and the delicacy of the fish. You get a lot of Champagne-like carbonation off the beer, you get tart apples, you get pears and peaches. The tartness of the beer and the grape sauce verjus is going to make this zing.” — Eric Borg, beer program manager